Vista - Can't dual boot vista/7

So here's the deal: My computer will not boot into Windows.

I have a 250 GB HDD and a 500 GB HDD. the 250 GB had Vista x64 on it and then I partitioned it with Acronis (after backing it up to the 500 GB HDD) so I could install Windows 7 x64 on the smaller (about 55 GB) partition that I have just made. That didn't work so I reformatted my 250 with Acronis (the backup that I had) and tried to install Win7 on the 250 and just make a small partition from the installation screen. Now when I try to boot up there is just a black screen with a white blinking hash mark in the upper left corner. When I use a boot disk it does show that there is partition on the 250 GB and both Vista and 7 are installed, but for some reason I can't seem to boot to them.

Long story short: I want to be able to dual boot to windows vista or windows 7. How do I do that?


If you didn't read that paragraph basically I have Vista and 7 installed in two partitions on one HDD and it wont boot, and I would like it to be able to boot into either one.


sorry if this isn't the right forum to post in

Did you start Windows Vista 64 bit and start the install of Windows 7 64
from within Vista _or- did you install Windows 7 64 bit by booting from its
DVD _or_ did you do it some other way?

Tom Ferguson


"MasterAlex" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:1964ad4aa03517b69b834018571d6e7a@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

I originally just had the 250GB HDD as vista. Then I put win7 on the new 60 GB partition. so no, i did not install 7 from within vista

Hi, Alex.

I know you are posting in a "forum", which forwards your bare-naked posts to
Microsoft's public news server, where Tom and I are reading them. But the
"forum" does not bother to forward the context, so would you please quote
the prior context in each message.

You did not answer Tom's question directly. I GUESS you mean that you
booted from the Win7 DVD to run Win7 Setup. Setup SHOULD have asked you
which partition you wanted to use for Win7. It then would have created the
\Windows folder on that partition and installed the bulk of Win7 there. It
would also have updated the startup files on the System Partition - which
already held the startup files for Vista - to create the dual-boot menu.

So the question is: Why didn't Setup behave as expected?

I've never used Acronis and I got confused with your adventure tale about
it. You SHOULD have just used Vista's Disk Management to shrink your
original partition. Then you could have either created your new partition
with Disk Management before installing Win7, or let Win7 Setup create and
format it as part of the Win7 installation.

Both Vista and Win7 will respect your existing drive letters if you install
from a Windows desktop, such as by running Win7 Setup while booted into
Vista. But if you run Setup by booting from the DVD, then Setup does not
know the letters assigned by the previous OS, so it starts from scratch. It
assigns C: to its on "boot volume" (see KB 314470 for the definition of
"boot volume" - which is NOT what most users expect). And then it assigns
D: to the "system volume", which Vista probably calls C:.

Win7 adds a new wrinkle by creating a small system partition with no drive
letter in some cases, but I don't now if that would have happened in your
case. Does Disk Management reveal such a partition on your computer?

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@xxxxxx
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64

"MasterAlex" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:e4a913d3333467d7c77619d3d3d07f09@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

MasterAlex wrote:You may have damaged the Master Boot Record (MBR). Here is how to fix
for XP and Vista.

http://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/fix-mbr-xp-vista/

- --
Best Regards, Keith
http://home.comcast.net/~kilowattradio/
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"MasterAlex" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:e4a913d3333467d7c77619d3d3d07f09@xxxxxx-gateway.com...Then try starting Vista and insert the W7 dvd and work from the splash
screen. You can select the target volume during setup and use the second
drive for W7.

I have a 120GB HDD which has two 60GB partitions one of which has Vista 32
HP installed on it. The other partition has some old XP backup files on it.
I installed Win7 by running the setup program on the ISO disk from Vista
onto the the Old XP partition and was not only fast but dual boot works
perfectly between the vista and Win7 partitions.

"Keith" <kilowattradio@xxxxxx-reply-to.invalid> wrote in message
news:h5v1e9$mca$1@xxxxxx-september.org...

One possibility:

Put the Acronis disk in the drive. Boot from it. Delete the partition(s)
that contain Windows 7. Be careful!

Shut the machine down. Try booting to Vista. If it boots, great! If it does
not, put the Vista disk in the drive and boot from the DVD. Use it to fix
the boot loader. There are instructions available at various sites. Google
or Bing for it. Any questions, post back.

Once the loader is fixed, boot to Vista. Put the Windows 7 in the drive and
start the installer from within Vista. Be careful to choose the correct
target partition as you go through the 7 install process.

Upon completion, the system should be bootable to either system using the
Windows Boot Manager.

I emphasize that this is but one way. There are others. It can be done
without use of Acronis or any other non MS tools.

Good luck.
Tom



"MasterAlex" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:e4a913d3333467d7c77619d3d3d07f09@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Thank you very much for replying,


I tried bootrec.exe /fixboot and it appeared to work, I could boot into either Windows7 or "Windows Vista (recovered)" and when I booted into Windows 7 it wanted to do a check disk, which I cancelled. Then when I got into the OS there were a lot of errors, missing and corrupted files and the like, and then it restarted and went back to the boot menu and I chose vista this time, then I allowed it to check the disk. It said that it had fixed an error and rebooted and now I'm back to where I was. Sometime the recboot.exe doesn't even work (it says it doesn't recognize the command). I tried to rebuild the bcd and it didn't work.